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Stand up for #AAPIEqualPay

As the former Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, current board member of MomsRising, and most importantly, being a mom to two incredible daughters myself, fighting for equitable treatment of Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) women and girls is my lifelong mission.

Contrary to the “model minority myth” which perpetuates the false idea that all AAPIs smart, good at math, and ‘crazy rich’, over half a million AAPI women live in poverty one-third. And much of the labor of AAPI women - in nail salons, restaurants, in your home, in the service industry - is devalued, invisibilized or silenced. And the myth has been used as a wedge to further anti-Black racism. But, AAPIs are standing up and declaring we are #NotYourModelMinority.

In 2019, AAPI women still face unequal pay, getting paid only 85 cents for every dollar of what white men get paid. But when we disaggregate the data as NAPAWF has done, we find that even wider wage gaps exist for Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders and AAPI women face some of the largest within-ethnicity pay gaps among all racial groups. This disparity gets worse as AAPI women age. And it’s a fact AAPI moms face a wage penalty for that dads don’t. So the truth is, that not all AAPI families are crazy rich and we need solutions that close the wage gap for all women. March 5 represents the day that AAPI women’s pay catches up to that of white men.

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